It’s clear that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and its behavior elicit strong opinions from Capitol Hill and beyond.

Earlier this month, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, called the CFPB the “single most powerful and least accountable Federal agency in all of Washington.” Hensarling’s colleague, Rep. Randy Neugebauer, R-Texas, Chairman of the Financial Services Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit, recently suggested that the CFPB operates with a “lack of transparency and lack of accountability.”

And now, one U.S. Senator is calling the CFPB a “rogue agency” that needs to be seriously reined in.

“Right now, the CFPB is a rogue agency that dishes out malicious financial policy and creates new rules and regulations without any oversight from Congress,” Perdue added. “On top of that, the agency itself has failed to operate within its own budget and proven it is more concerned with preserving its own power than protecting the public.”

Perdue is seeking to change all of that by introducing a budget amendment to make the CFPB subject to the Congressional appropriations process. “Currently, the CFPB operates under the Federal Reserve and is unaccountable to Congress,” Perdue’s office said in a release.

The CFPB also engendered negative reaction when it released its its new borrower education tool earlier this year. Included among the tool is the Rate Checker. In its beta release, this tool is supposed to help consumers understand what interest rates may be available to them by using the same underwriting variables that lenders use on their internal rate sheets.

“In other words, we are giving consumers direct access to the same type of information that the lenders themselves have,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray previously.

David Stevens, president and CEO of the Mortgage Bankers Association, told HousingWire that the release of the rate checker tool was disappointing.

“It’s actually disappointing the bureau would put this out,” Stevens said. “I’m not a CFPB knee jerk. They do a lot of good and while I think things can be improved, we’re on board with them. But this wasn’t well thought out.”

Despite negative reaction from the industry, the CFPB said it was not going to take down the rate checker.

“The Rate Checker is an educational tool, and part of a larger suite of tools to help consumers be more informed and effective mortgage shoppers. The Rate Checker does not connect consumers with lenders,” a spokesperson for CFPB told HousingWire in January.

“As explained on the website, interest is only one of many costs associated with getting a mortgage. Before making a final decision, consumers should compare Good Faith Estimates from multiple lenders, which include all of these costs,” the spokesperson said.

In addition to those issues, the CFPB’s budget has also irked many in Congress.

“The bureau regrettably remains unaccountable to the American people,” Hensarling said earlier this month. “That is why we need the CFPB on budget and led by a bipartisan commission; mere testimony is not the equivalent to accountability.”

Bringing the CFPB under Congressional oversight would be a step in the right direction, Perdue said.

“Ultimately, I believe the CFPB should be dismantled, but an important first step is bringing it into the light for the American people to see its harmful effects on consumers,” Perdue added.

In January, after David Perdue was sworn in to the Senate, the Georgia Republican had his staff gather down the street from the Capitol for their first-ever meeting together.

Inside the rotunda of the National Archives—where original copies of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are housed—the former CEO of Dollar General was trying to convey a sense of purpose to his team.

“I was basically saying, ‘Look this is bigger than us. There is something very special going on here,’” Perdue recalled telling his staff in an interview with The Daily Caller in his Capitol Hill office last week.

“A guy like me from the outside of politics getting elected, I felt like there was something special going on,” Perdue said. “We’ve got a crisis going on right now and we’ve got an opportunity to do something to affect that. And I basically reminded them that I didn’t want to be a member of the first generation in American history that had to tell their kids, ‘I’m leaving you a country worse off than my dad gave me.’”

Until November, Perdue had never been elected to public office. (He isn’t a complete stranger to politics, though: his first cousin is former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue).

But about two months into his term, Perdue seems to relish coming in as an outsider to an institution that includes people who’ve been around for 40 years.

“I just think that outside perspective is the biggest asset I bring here,” Perdue said. “Bigger than the CEO background.”

Perdue — who sits on the budget, foreign relations, agriculture and judiciary committees — says he thinks he can especially add value, as a former CEO, to budget issues.

“I’m using the crisis word because I really believe we’re so far past the tipping point that it’s almost unmanageable,” Perdue said. “Here’s why I say this: We already have 18 to 20 trillion dollars of debt. If interest rates were at their 30-year historic rate of five and a half percent, we’d already be paying a trillion dollars in interest almost.”

“That’s not manageable,” Perdue added. “That’s twice what we spend on the Department of Defense. That’s more than we spend on our total discretionary budget. And that’s just not workable. So I’m not looking for a balanced budget, I’m looking for a surplus budget to help begin paying this down.”

But while Perdue — who has led a number of other companies, including Reebok—often stresses his business background, he’s still adjusting to the difference of being one of 100 rather than at the top of a company.

“As the CEO, I could drive the priorities of the company,” he said. “It was my job, along with the people around me, to determine those priorities. In a political process, its not that easy, particularly when you have the partisanship that we have. It’s really hard to drive the priorities. And you can see that in the first two months.”

“There are some smart people here, I will tell you that, on both sides,” Perdue added. “If we could ever get people to focus on what we agree on and stop bickering about what we disagree on we could get some of these things fixed.”

During his campaign, Perdue emphasized his desire for term-limits for legislators, something he says he still strongly supports.

After he was sworn in, Perdue co-sponsored a bill limiting senators to serving two six-year terms. He has also pledged to abide by that on his own. “I’m only going to be here, at max, two terms.”

“Last Congress, there were 36 senators who had been an elected officer for over 30 years,” Perdue said. “I just don’t think that the founders ever even dreamed of that as a possibility.”

Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) traveled to Israel this week and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ahead of his controversial address to Congress.

“I am eager to welcome and hear Prime Minister Netanyahu’s address to Congress next month, and I hope that continuous dialogue between our two nations will strengthen our relationship,” Perdue said in a statement Friday.

The visit marked Perdue’s first trip overseas as a senator and as a member of the Foreign Relations Committee.

Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) invitation for Netanyahu to speak before Congress on March 3 has divided lawmakers, with a growing number of Democrats saying they will skip the speech due to the way it was handled.

Neither President Obama nor Secretary of State John Kerry are expected to meet with the Israeli official during his trip to Washington, and a group of 23 liberal House Democrats on Thursday urged Boehner to delay Netanyahu’s speech.

Almost two-thirds of Americans think inviting Netanyahu to speak to Congress without notifying Obama was the wrong thing to do, according to a CNN/ORC International pollreleased Tuesday.

Despite the controversy, Netanyahu said he would travel to the United States because of an “obligation” to protect Israel.

“I am going to the United States not because I seek a confrontation with the president, but because I must fulfill my obligation to speak up on a matter that affects the very survival of my country,” he said in a statement earlier this month. “And I intend to speak in the US Congress because Congress might have an important role on a nuclear deal with Iran.”

Netanyahu is opposed to the ongoing talks with the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany (P5+1), and his comments during his meeting with Perdue likely offer a preview of his March speech.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran is relentlessly pursuing nuclear weapons with the express purpose of destroying the state of Israel. The P5+1’s latest proposal won’t stop them,” he said. “The Iranians of course know the details of that proposal and Israel does to. So when we say that the current proposal would lead to a bad deal, a dangerous deal, we know what we’re talking about.”

“I’m open to hearing the positions and arguments of those who think differently, and I would hope that they would be open to hear the arguments of Israel as well.”

David Perdue has an idea for his forthcoming maiden speech in the U.S. Senate: Bring back the jean jacket.

Perdue and his jacket formed a ubiquitous image on Georgia television screens last year, as he stood in a field staring off toward the horizon, branded as “The Outsider.” Why would the message change after winning the election?

“I can’t get any support from these guys,” Perdue said of his staff.

“I don’t know that it fits the decorum of the Senate, but maybe for a day,” communications director Megan Whittemore said.

“Hey, anything to break up the mood, right?” Perdue added.

Still striving to be the outsider

Jean jacket or no, the Republican Perdue continues to position himself as an outsider, even as he settles in to the Senate. Working out of a cramped three-room basement freshman office for the next few months, Perdue is vocal about his frustrations but optimistic that he can carve out a role tackling the fiscal issues he holds dear and priorities important to the state.

It bothered Perdue that it took the Senate 21/2 weeks and a barrage of amendments to pass a Keystone XL pipeline bill that “should have been a no-brainer.” But he enjoys his Friday afternoons presiding over a mostly empty Senate, listening to the speeches from senators from both parties. To Perdue’s surprise, “there’s a lot of content in those speeches” to learn from.

Among the early bonds he has formed is with Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., who knew Perdue when the freshman was CEO of Nashville-based Dollar General. Corker, who built a large construction company, also has a business background.

Corker said Perdue has managed better than he did in his own 2007 debut.

“I don’t know where he developed this knowledge, but he understands more fully the inner workings of the Senate when he came in,” Corker said. “He gets the issues. He’s a quick study. He also gets how things need to operate.”

An opportunity to be a go-to

Corker, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, asked Perdue to be chairman of a subcommittee overseeing the State Department and other related agencies.

Corker intends to reauthorize the State Department for the first time since 2002. That means reviewing and revising congressional direction for how the department is run, action that will run through Perdue’s subcommittee.

“Once he goes through this process, probably more than anybody in the U.S. Senate, he will know those inner workings (at the State Department) in a firsthand way,” Corker said. “That will make him the go-to.”

Perdue would love to be a go-to on the federal budget, as fiscal matters were his top priority throughout the campaign, but there are plenty of Republicans who feel the same way. Perdue scored a seat on the Budget Committee and is eager to dig in.

Seeking a budget surplus

During Perdue’s first hearing, Budget Chairman Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., recognized the freshman to question a witness.

“I want to welcome our newest senator to the committee and thank him for all the work that he’s done in the private sector at balancing budgets,” Enzi said.

“Thank you, Mr. Chairman, but I’d like to correct you on one thing,” Perdue replied. “If I had ever balanced the budget, I would have been fired every single time. We had to produce a few more dollars on the positive side than the negative side.”

A few seats away, the moment made Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., a fellow CEO-turned-senator, light up.

“People who served here too long or people who didn’t serve in the private sector, they get an attitude if we can keep our deficit to 3 percent of (gross domestic product) or 4 percent of GDP, that’s OK,” Johnson said in an interview. “That’s not the attitude David and I have, which is not just to balance the budget but have a surplus.”

Perdue, who got excited to snag a print copy of the president’s fiscal 2015 budget request, said he is eager to craft a budget that reaches a surplus within the next decade.

Some tough calls

Though Perdue missed out on the Armed Services Committee — an early setback that broke Georgia’s four-decade streak on the committee — he did get on Agriculture, as he hoped. There, Perdue will be chairman of the Subcommittee on Conservation, Forestry and Natural Resources, where he will scrutinize the Environmental Protection Agency.

On the floor, there has been a flurry of votes on amendments related to the Keystone pipeline. In one case, Perdue and fellow Georgia Republican Johnny Isakson changed their votes on an amendment that would have reauthorized the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

They supported it at first but flipped to no after a discussion with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

Perdue said the vote switch, first reported by Politico, came after McConnell told them that passing the amendment could complicate resolving the Keystone bill with the House version — delaying the bill’s arrival on the president’s desk. In addition, Perdue said, he was always concerned with approving the fund permanently without first getting the budget under control.

Another tricky early decision involved President Barack Obama’s nominee for attorney general, Loretta Lynch. Perdue caused a minor stir among conservative activists by speaking kindly of Lynch after her confirmation hearing last month before Perdue and the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“There was a lot of talk out there about whether he was standing with the attorney general,” said Jeanne Seaver of the Savannah Tea Party early this week. Seaver added, given Lynch’s stated backing of Obama’s immigration actions: “I feel confident that I don’t think that (Perdue) will support Lynch.”

Isakson, who is running for a third Senate term next year, said Perdue has taken the right path so far, from the staff he’s hired — a mix of campaign and Washington veterans — to the bills he co-sponsors.

“One of the things I admire about what he’s doing is he’s keeping every single one of his campaign promises in things he’s sponsored, things he’s doing,” Isakson said.

Among those items are instituting a national sales tax to replace income and payroll taxes and limiting U.S. senators to two terms. Both are not much more popular than denim on the Senate floor, but that doesn’t bother Perdue.

“I ran as an outsider,” Perdue said. “I’m going to do this job as an outsider. I didn’t come here to just govern. I came here to make a difference and try to change the direction of our country.”

Obamacare is a disaster, and it’s only getting worse. The Obama Administration’s efforts to fix one problem have just led to another: “potential double-digit rate hikes in 2015.” No matter how you slice it, Obamacare just doesn’t work, and we must replace it with a market-based system that actually lowers costs. Washington has ignored the majority of the American people and their disapproval of Obamacare, but as Georgia’s next Senator, I will fight to get rid of this failed law and protect Georgia’s families from its harmful effects.

The Obama administration’s effort to end one political crisis during the 2014 Obamacare rollout may have sown the seeds of another controversy: potential double-digit rate hikes in 2015.

If insurers have their way, some residents in politically key states like Florida, North Carolina and Iowa would face hikes of 11 percent to nearly 18 percent — far beyond the average 7.5 percent increase in proposed rates for much of the country.

Major carriers there in part blame such increases on the administration’s response to the furor that erupted when millions of Americans received notice last fall that their health policies would be canceled because they fell short of Obamacare requirements.

Facing a barrage of criticism from Republicans and some Democrats, who accused him of breaking his promise that people could keep plans they liked, President Barack Obama relented. He told insurers they could continue offering those plans if states agreed. About two-thirds of the states took him up on the offer.

But the president’s decision is now having an impact on upcoming rates, insurers say. Many younger, healthier Americans — the category companies had counted on enrolling when they set their initial prices — stuck with their existing coverage. In states with the biggest numbers of these “transitional” policyholders, their absence from the Obamacare market is pushing premiums higher.

Although our campaign continues to surge ahead, Michelle Nunn is still on our heels. Together, you and I can work to make real changes in our nation’s capital. It’ll take a lot of hard work, but once I’m your United States Senator, I will work every day to tackle our debt, create a stronger Georgia, and build a brighter future for our country.

An InsiderAdvantage/Opinion Savvy survey of 719 likely voters shows both the contests for U.S. Senate and for governor of Georgia to be competitive races. The poll of ‘landline’ and mobile device respondents was conducted August 12 and 13. The poll has a margin of error of 3.7%.

A majority of Americans say that the economy is getting worse (56 percent), and only 38 percent say that it’s getting better. It’s unnecessary that hardworking families are struggling because of President Obama’s bad economic policies. Georgia deserves a leader with a fresh perspective that will go to Washington and fight to get our economy back on track. That’s what I will do as a United States Senator.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Gallup’s U.S. Economic Confidence Index dropped slightly to -17 for the week ending Aug. 10. Though falling two points from the previous week, the index score is an improvement from the -21 recorded at the end of July, the lowest measure so far in 2014.

Though Gallup’s weekly index readings have been remarkably stable so far in 2014, they have shown a bit more variation since July. Week-to-week fluctuations rarely exceeded more than two index points in either direction earlier in 2014, but a six-point drop in July was a brief departure from that stability. The latest reading, however, is a return to the pattern of consistent readings seen so far in 2014.

According to a new survey conducted by the Hicks Evaluation Group (HEG) and the Truman National Security Project last weekend, Georgia Governor Nathan Deal (R) is tied with state Sen. Jason Carter (D)in the gubernatorial race, and Republican David Perdue is ahead of Michelle Nunn (D) in the election for the U.S. Senate. The poll included 788 likely general election voters and took place August 8-10, 2014.

The governor’s race seems to be a tossup with Carter at 45.4 percent of support and Deal at 45.3. The Senate race, however, is definitely tipping towards the Republicans with Perdue leading 47.6 to Nunn’s 41.5 percent. The margin of error is +/- 3.48 percent.

Many young people are spending their summer not working for money but working for their beliefs and their future.

Carmen Foskey, who graduated from Warner Robins High School in May, is the regional field organizer for David Perdue’s Senate campaign and is leading the efforts of Students for Perdue for Houston County.

“There is an idea that politics is for older people,” Foskey said. “But there are so many issues that apply directly to youth. Legislation that is created in Washington, D.C., directly impacts young people in Georgia. If we don’t get involved, our voice won’t be heard.”

Perdue, who is the former president and CEO of Reebok and former chairman and CEO of Dollar General, is a Houston County native.